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ContemporarySociology

January 2010 • Volume 39 • Number 1American Sociological Association

A JOURNAL OF REVIEWS

CS_v39n1_Jan2009.indd 1 17/12/2009 5:31:55 PM

EDITORAlan Sica

MANAGING EDITORAnne Sica

ASSISTANT EDITORSKathryn Densberger

Richard M. Simon

Paul AmatoPennsylvania State University

Robert AntonioUniversity of Kansas

Karen BarkeyColumbia University

Victoria BonnellUniversity of California,Berkeley

Alan BoothPennsylvania State University

Rose BrewerUniversity of Minnesota

Dana BrittonKansas State University

Craig CalhounNew York University

Bruce CarruthersNorthwestern University

Georgi DerluguianNorthwestern University

Paul DiMaggioPrinceton University

Francis DodooPennsylvania State University

Elaine DraperCalifornia State University,Los Angeles

Yen Le EspirituUniversity of California,San Diego

Joan H. FujimuraUniversity of Wisconsin

Joe GerteisUniversity of Minnesota

Janice IrvineUniversity of Massachusetts,Amherst

Nazli KibriaBoston University

Douglas KlaymanSocial Dynamics, LLC

Charles LemertWesleyan University

Nicole MarwellColumbia University

John McCarthyPennsylvania State University

Ruth MilkmanUniversity of California,Los Angeles

Valentine MoghadamPurdue University

Mignon MooreUniversity of California,Los Angeles

Ann MorningNew York University

Andrew NoymerUniversity of California, Irvine

Jennifer PierceUniversity of Minnesota

Harland PrechelTexas A&M University

Robert SampsonHarvard University

Michael SchudsonUniversity of California,San Diego

Wendy SimondsGeorgia State University

Neil SmelserUniversity of California,Berkeley

Christian SmithNotre Dame University

Judith TreasUniversity of California,Irvine

Stephen TurnerUniversity of South Florida

Jeff UlmerPennsylvania State University

EDITORIAL BOARD

Pennsylvania State University

A JOURNAL OF REVIEWSJanuary 2010 – Volume 39 – Number 1

Sharon BirdIowa State University

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1 Editor’s Remarks The Problem of Categories

REVIEW ESSAYS

Author Title Reviewer

Eclipse of the Professoriate: Fat Rabbits Are We?

3 Frank Donoghue The Last Professors: The Corporate Robert J. Antonio University and the Fate of the Humanities

The Curious Case of Academic Reviewing 8 Michèle Lamont How Professors Think: Inside the Theodore M. Porter Curious World of Academic Judgment

The Passion, and Passions, of Max Weber10 Joachim Radkau Max Weber: A Biography Harvey Goldman Translated by Patrick Camiller

Future-making as a Vocation12 Steven Shapin The Scientific Life: A Moral History Peter Weingart of a Late Modern Vocation

REVIEWS15 Janet Afary Sexual Politics in Modern Iran John Foran16 Rabah Aissaoui Immigration and National Identity: John W.P. Veugelers North African Political Movements in Colonial and Postcolonial France 17 Madeleine Arnot Educating the Gendered Citizen: Sociological Cynthia Engagements with National and Global Agendas Miller-Idriss19 Anny Bakalian and Backlash 9/11: Middle Eastern and Muslim Kristine J. Ajrouch

Mehdi Bozorgmehr Americans Respond 20 Katherine Borderline Americans: Racial Division and Harel Shapira

Benton-Cohen the Labor War in the Arizona Borderlands 22 Elizabeth K. Briody Partnering for Organizational Performance: Charles Heckscher

and Robert T. Collaboration and Culture in the Global Trotter II (eds.) Workplace

23 David L. Brown and Rural Retirement Migration Norah KeatingNina Glasgow

25 Robert D. Bullard and Race, Place, and Environmental Justice After Kevin Fox GothamBeverly Wright (eds.) Hurricane Katrina: Struggles to Reclaim, Rebuild, and Revitalize New Orleans and the Gulf Coast

26 Ben Carrington and Marxism, Cultural Studies and Sport David KarenIan McDonald (eds.)

CONTENTS

27 Timothy J. Dunn Blockading the Border and Human Rights: Sara Schatz The El Paso Operation that Remade Immigration Enforcement29 Claire Dwyer and New Geographies of Race and Racism Russell King

Caroline Bressey (eds.)30 Anthony Elliott and Identity in Question Judith A. Howard

Paul du Gay (eds.)32 Tina Fetner How the Religious Right Shaped Lesbian Amin Ghaziani and Gay Activism 33 Nancy Foner (ed.) Across Generations: Immigrant Families Margarita A. Mooney in America 35 Renée C. Fox and Observing Bioethics Jill A. Fisher

Judith P. Swazey36 Neil Gilbert A Mother’s Work: How Feminism, the Market, Barbara J. Risman and Policy Shape Family Life38 Laura E. Gomez Manifest Destinies: The Making of the Roberto G. Gonzales Mexican American Race39 Stephen Halebsky Small Towns and Big Business: Challenging Rhonda F. Levine Wal-Mart Superstores40 Martin Hand Making Digital Cultures: Access, Interactivity, Paul-Brian McInerney and Authenticity42 Sandra L. Hanson Swimming Against the Tide: African American Deborah Belle Girls and Science Education43 Malcolm D. Holmes Race and Police Brutality: Roots of an Carla Shedd

and Brad W. Smith Urban Dilemma44 Ray-May Hsung, Contexts of Social Capital: Social Networks in Mario L. Small

Nan Lin, and Markets, Communities, and FamiliesRonald L. Breiger (eds.)

46 Mike Hulme Why We Disagree About Climate Change: Charles Perrow Understanding Controversy, Inaction, and Opportunity

47 Pinar Ilkkaracan (ed.) Deconstructing Sexuality in the Frances S. Hasso Middle East: Challenges and Discourses

48 David T. Johnson and The Next Frontier: National Development, John K. CochranFranklin E. Zimring Political Change, and the Death Penalty in Asia

50 Victoria Johnson Backstage at the Revolution: How the Royal Marco Santoro Paris Opera Survived the End of the Old Regime

52 Hank Johnston (ed.) Culture, Social Movements, and Protest Barry Ruback53 Monika Krause, The University Against Itself: The NYU Leslie A. Bunnage

Mary Nolan, Strike and the Future of the AcademicMichael Palm, and WorkplaceAndrew Ross (eds.)

55 Stephen J. Kunitz The Health of Populations: General Theories Nicky Hart and Particular Realities

56 Michel S. Laguerre Global Neighborhoods: Jewish Quarters in Paula E. Hyman Paris, London, and Berlin

58 Gayle Letherby, Sex As Crime? Barbara G. BrentsKate Williams, Philip Birch, and Maureen Cain (eds.)

59 James J. Lorence The Unemployed People’s Movement: Leftists, Rory McVeigh Liberals, and Labor in Georgia, 1929-1941


60 Siniša Maleševic Ernest Gellner and Contemporary Ian Jarvieand Mark Haugaard Social Thought(eds.)

62 Raquel R. Marquez Transformations of La Familia on the Isabel Martinezand Harriett D. Romo U.S.-Mexico Border(eds.)

64 Mary Jo Maynes, Telling Stories: The Use of Personal Narratives Nancy T. AmmermanJennifer L. Pierce, in the Social Sciences and Historyand Barbara Laslett

65 Dario Melossi Controlling Crime, Controlling Society: Mathieu Deflem Thinking About Crime in Europe and America

66 Michael A. Messner It’s All for the Kids: Gender, Families, and Kyle C. Longest Youth Sports

68 Benny Morris One State, Two States: Resolving the Israel/ Daniel Breslau Palestine Conflict

69 Ziad W. Munson The Making of Pro-life Activists: How Social Benita Roth Movement Mobilization Works

70 James L. Nolan, Jr. Legal Accents, Legal Borrowing: The Elizabeth E. Martinez International Problem-Solving Court Movement

72 Eileen O’Brien The Racial Middle: Latinos and Asian Americans Silvia Pedraza Living Beyond the Racial Divide

73 David W. Park and The History of Media and Communication Sarah E. IgoJefferson Pooley (eds.) Research: Contested Memories

75 Andreas Pickel The Problem of Order in the Global Age: Thomas Burr Systems and Mechanisms

77 Trevor Pinch and Living in a Material World: Economic Gabriel AbendRichard Swedberg (eds.) Sociology Meets Science and Technology Studies

78 Adrienne Pine Working Hard, Drinking Hard: On Violence Robert Brenneman and Survival in Honduras

79 Hillary Potter Battle Cries: Black Women and Intimate Patricia O’Brien Partner Abuse

80 Lorna Rivera Laboring to Learn: Women’s Literacy and Stephanie Moller Poverty in the Post-Welfare Era

82 Edward Royce Poverty and Power: The Problem of Structural John G. Dale Inequality

83 Philip Carl Salzman Culture and Conflict in the Middle East Mohammed A. Bamyeh

84 Russell Leigh Sharman Nightshift NYC David Grazianand Cheryl Harris Sharman

86 Shirley Anne Tate Black Beauty: Aesthetics, Stylization, Politics Adia Harvey Wingfield

87 Lisa Taylor A Taste for Gardening: Classed and Mark Bhatti Gendered Practices

88 John Tehranian Whitewashed: America’s Invisible Middle Therese Saliba Eastern Minority

90 Cihan Tugal Passive Revolution: Absorbing The Islamic Karen Barkey Challenge to Capitalism

91 Daniel J.Walkowitz Contested Histories in Public Space: Timothy Kubaland Lisa Maya Knauer Memory, Race, and Nation(eds.)


92 John F. Welsh After Multiculturalism: The Politics of Race Joseph Gerteis and the Dialectics of Liberty

94 Edmundo Werna, Corporate Social Responsibility and Urban Denise KleinrichertRamin Keivani, and Development: Lessons from the SouthDavid Murphy

95 John F. Wozniak, Transformative Justice: Critical and John F. GalliherMichael C. Braswell, Peacemaking Themes Influenced byRonald E. Vogel, and Richard QuinneyKristie R. Blevins (eds.)

96 Terence Wright Visual Impact: Culture and the Meaning Nandi Dill of Images

98 Nicola Yeates Globalizing Care Economies and Migrant Donna R. Gabaccia Workers: Explorations in Global Care Chains

BRIEFLY NOTED100 Julian Agyeman and Environmental Justice and Sustainability in the Former Soviet Union

Yelena Ogneva- Himmelbeger

100 Hans-Jürgen Andreß The Working Poor in Europe: Employment, Poverty and Globalizationand Henning Lohmann (eds.)

101 Jason C. Bivins Religion of Fear: The Politics of Horror in Conservative Evangelicalism101 Charles H. Blake and Corruption and Democracy In Latin America

Stephen D. Morris102 Charles L. Bosk What Would You Do? Juggling Bioethics and Ethnography 102 Steven M. Buechler Critical Sociology103 Jennifer Cole and Figuring the Future: Globalization and the Temporalities of Children

Deborah Durham (eds.) and Youth103 Howard J. Ehrlich Hate Crimes and Ethnoviolence: The History, Current Affairs, and

Future of Discrimination in America104 James William Gibson A Reenchanted World: The Quest for a New Kinship with Nature104 Adrian Horn Juke Box Britain: Americanisation and Youth Culture, 1945-60105 C. Julia Huang Charisma and Compassion: Chen Yen and the Buddhist Tzu Chi

Movement105 Masoud Kamali Racial Discrimination: Institutional Patterns and Politics106 Jean-Claude Kaufman The Single Woman and the Fairytale Prince106 Shayne Lee and Holy Mavericks: Evangelical Innovators and the

Phillip Luke Sinitiere Spiritual Marketplace107 Alberto Manguel The Library at Night108 Naomi McCormack; Out of the Question: Women, Media, and the Art of Inquiry

research by Peter Simonson

108 Wade Rathke Citizen Wealth: Winning the Campaign to Save Working Families109 Cynthia L. Starita The Mounting Threat of Domestic Terrorism: al Qaeda and the

Salvadoran Gang MS-13109 Shirley R. Steinberg Christotainment: Selling Jesus through

and Joe L. Kincheloe Popular Culture(eds.)


110 Andrew B. Whitford Presidential Rhetoric and the Public Agenda: Constructing theand Jeff Yates War on Drugs

111 Publications Received

118 index of authoRs by categoRy

Author Title

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REVIEW ESSAYS

Eclipse of the Professoriate: Fat Rabbits Are We?

ROBERT J. ANTONIO

University of [email protected]

Democracy cannot flourish where thechief influences in selecting subjectmatter of instruction are utilitarianends narrowly conceived for themasses, and, for the higher educationof the few, the traditions of a specializedcultivated class.

John Dewey, Democracy and Education(1985 [1916]:200)

Frank Donoghue focuses on the fate of ‘‘theprofessor,’’ excluding academics dependingprimarily on funded research and consul-tancy. Employing an array of critical works,reports, and studies (some by sociologistssuch as Steven Brint and Stanley Aronowitz),he analyzes trends in American higher edu-cation and speculates about its future. Inhis view, the polarized educational worldof which Dewey warned has arrived witha vengeance and is destined to becomemore extreme and impervious to egalitarianchange. Donoghue holds that broadsides byturn of the twentieth-century industrialistsand social critics provided a ‘‘template’’ fortoday’s debates over higher education.Andrew Carnegie, Richard Teller Crane,Clarence Birdseye, and other supporters ofbig business, he argues, saw liberal artseducation to be a wasteful distraction fromdevelopment of business-like expertise; thatis, colleges ignored practicality, efficiency,and productivity and managed their profes-sorial workforce in an unbusiness-like way.By contrast, Donoghue explains, critics,such as Upton Sinclair and ThorsteinVeblen, attacked college administratorsand trustees for serving corporate wealthand anti-intellectualism, and professorsfor rejecting identification with workers,embracing rarefied meritocractic ideals,and accepting steep inequalities in their

ranks and beyond. Donoghue (p. xviii)holds that today’s professoriate internalizecorporate values of competition, productiv-ity, individual success, and hierarchy moredeeply than their predecessors and thattheir ‘‘frenzied pursuit of prestige’’ obliter-ates classical educational ideals about culti-vating the self and citizenship capacitiesand dulls mindfulness about the fate oftheir graduate students and poorly locatedcolleagues. Donoghue (p. 22) believes thatthe professoriate’s naivete about theirstratum’s employment conditions hastenstheir vocation’s decline and makes them,in Sinclair’s words, ‘‘fat rabbits to theplutocracy.’’

Donoghue (p. 56) states that in 2003, 65 per-cent of higher education instructional staffwere adjuncts and that the trend to increasedpart-time and nontenure track instructorscontinues to accelerate.1 He asserts that ten-ured and tenure track professors are oblivi-ous about this trend and its impacts (e.g.,that adjuncts are usually low paid, lack ben-efits, voice, autonomy, and may even lackoffice space). Employment prospects in hisfield, English, and in many other humanitiesareas, have been weakening for nearly 40years, but graduate programs and profes-sional associations have not reduced enroll-ments and often have denied the problem’sseverity (e.g., treating it as a result of tempo-rary downturns, promising growth andwaves of retirements and tenure-track open-ings). Donoghue (pp. 33–34) estimates that

The Last Professors: The CorporateUniversity and the Fate of the Humanities,by Frank Donoghue. NewYork:FordhamUniversity Press, 2008. 180pp. $22.00paper. ISBN: 9780823228607.

3 Contemporary Sociology 39, 1

� American Sociological Association 2010DOI: 10.1177/0094306109356657

http://csx.sagepub.com

in 2001–02, about 3,000 English literaturePhDs competed for 431 tenure-track jobs.He reports that median time for completionof humanities PhDs lengthened from 9.7 to12 years between 1975 and 1987 and thatmany students accrue substantial debt,which burden them for decades, while theytoil as adjuncts or in other low-wage jobs.Equating contingent academic labor to thejob of cleaning up elephant dung at the cir-cus, Donoghue (pp. 64–65) asserts thatadjuncts sustain themselves with ‘‘successnarratives’’ about loving their work, havingpride in position (those employed by presti-gious institutions), or deluding themselvesabout eventually attaining a tenure-trackslot. In his view, starting over outside aca-deme is a daunting task for no longer young,high-achieving academics, who believe inmeritocracy, see their employment problemsas a personal failure, and lack otherexpertise.

In the humanities, especially English andHistory, Donoghue (pp. 46–47) holds, schol-ars think of themselves as ‘‘authors’’; mono-graphs are the chief ‘‘marker of prestige’’and necessary means for tenure and careeradvancement. However, he explains thattypical sales are about 250 books and thatmany are seldom read, cited, or taught. Hestates that university presses are de factogatekeepers, but their publication decisionsare often influenced by matters other thanscholarly quality. Although status has longbeen integral to academe, Donoghue argues,starting in the 1980s, publication of the U.S.News and World Report annual America’sBest Colleges issue and other yearly rankingsof baccalaureate, professional, and graduateprograms exacerbated status competitionand made status consciousness more perva-sive, self-righteous, and influential. Paralleldynamics operate across disciplines.2 Fac-ulty criticize the U.S. News rankings, buteagerly await them, because they impactresources, policies, and identities. Even pro-tests about bogus ranks often belie belief intheir general validity. At ‘‘upper tier’’ insti-tutions and even middling ones, Donoghueholds, concern about rank, colored heavilyby prestige anxiety and envy, is a major forceshaping student choices, alumni andlegislative agendas, administrative policy,and research directions. In an interview,

Donoghue (2008) declared that prestige isone of the chief ‘‘organizing fictions ofAmerican higher education,’’ replacing‘‘Arnoldian mottos’’ about the liberal artspromulgating ‘‘the best that has beenthought and said.’’ What a reversal of thescenario dreamed of by Alvin Gouldner(1979), when he spoke of ‘‘humanistic intel-lectuals’’ as a kind of vanguard of a potential-ly progressive ‘‘New Class’’ of professionalsand last best hope of the left.

Arguing that tenure is ‘‘disappearing,’’Donoghue contends that defending it onthe basis of academic freedom begs the ques-tion of why tenured professors have nottried to secure the same protection foradjuncts. He also holds that academic free-dom defenses do not counter charges thattenure makes faculty unaccountable andprotects slackers or stem erosion of the ten-ured ranks from incremental decisions toemploy more adjuncts to contain soaringcollege costs. Donoghue explains that highereducation’s fastest growing sectors, for-profit institutions and community colleges,employ mainly part-time, non-tenure-linefaculty and increasingly rely on standard-ized instruction (e.g., via online technologyand course management systems). Theirextensive top-down technical control,anchored in information technology, turninstructors into dispensable ‘‘delivery peo-ple.’’ For-profit institutions and communitycolleges de-emphasize the humanities,which are extraneous to vocational educa-tion and hard to ‘‘granularize’’ into formula-ic information bits. Donoghue (p. 97) quotesUniversity of Phoenix founder and leader ofthe for-profit education movement, JohnSperling, ‘‘We are not trying to develop [stu-dents’] value systems or go in for that‘expand their minds’ bullshit.’’ Rather thanprestige, Donoghue says, expedience rulesin these business-oriented lower circles. How-ever, he contends that other colleges, pressedby economic exigenciesand student demands,adopt for-profit and community college strat-egies to provide cheaper, more flexible, job-related education. Employing larger numbersof adjuncts, increasing on-line courses, adopt-ing aggressive branding and marketingtechniques, and cutting the humanities consti-tute the future of all but elite-sector highereducation, Donoghue claims.

4 Review Essays

Contemporary Sociology 39, 1

Donoghue (p. 114) argues that Americanhigher education is already a ‘‘caste system’’and that the inevitable trend is towardincreased polarization. He speculates that,within 50 years, corporatization will havetriumphed so decisively that two-year insti-tutions and programs oriented strictly to cer-tification for specific skills and jobs willreplace bachelor’s degrees. Most higher edu-cation graduates, he predicts, will have ‘‘akind of educational passport’’ certifyingtheir qualifications from one or more voca-tional programs. He argues that the 50 to100 most exclusive, wealthy colleges anduniversities will remain largely unchangedand be home to the humanities. He contendsthat poorly endowed, low-ranked collegesand universities will complete the ongoingshift from ‘‘social institutions,’’ servingbroader cultural ends, to business-orientedinstitutions, serving narrow corporate inter-ests. Donoghue sees the ‘‘flagship state uni-versity’’ to be a battleground buffeted bycross-pressures (e.g., needing to be expedi-ent and prestige seeking) that underminethe clarity of its mission and make its futureuncertain. He argues, however, that the mid-dle ground between top and bottom, inhigher education, will continue to evaporate.

After The Last Professors appeared, finan-cial crisis, recession, tight credit, low homevalues, and shrunken endowments gener-ated claims that the higher education bubblehas burst, made college costs much moredaunting for students and their parents,increased uncertainty about future collegeenrollments,andexacerbatedtensionsbetweenjob-seeking PhDs, adjuncts, poorly locatedprofessors, and comfy portions of the profes-soriate. The Chronicle of Higher Education,Inside Higher Education, and similar periodi-cals and blogs have been abuzz with heateddebate over imminent crises, increasedinequities, personnel, pay, and programcuts, and restructuring. Donohue’s mentor,Stanley Fish (2009) received 544 responsesto his comments about The Last Professorson his New York Times blog. Forty statesmade midyear (2008-09) cuts of about $60billion from their higher education budgets,and braced for more cuts and layoffs in2009-10 (Blumenstyke 2009). New reportsconfirmed accelerating use of adjunct labor.The American Federation of Teachers

(AFT) (2009:10, 14) said that between 1997and 2007, full-time tenured and tenure-trackfaculty declined from 33.1 percent to 27.3percent at higher education institutions andthat graduate assistants increased from 37percent to 41 percent of the instructionalstaff at public research institutions.3 Full-time administrators grew by 42.4 percent inall of academia during this period.4 A lobbygroup representing 60 leading Americanuniversities advocated reducing researchuniversities numbers and concentratingresources at top institutions (Baskin 2009).Other reports and commentaries portrayed,predicted, or advocated wider use of for-profit and community college strategiesand scenarios resembling the caste systemdescribed by Donoghue (e.g., ChronicleResearch Services 2009). They implied thateconomic crisis will force administrators toinstitute more sweeping changes muchsooner than the 50 years he predicted.

Donoghue argues unhesitatingly thathigher education trends of the last 30 yearswill accelerate and harden the existing castesystem into an educational iron cage. In thebook’s last paragraph, Donoghue (p. 138)hedges about the professoriate’s fate, statingthat we could ‘‘forestall’’ our ‘‘extinction’’ ifwe heed C. Wright Mills’ ‘‘first lesson ofmodern sociology’’ and locate ourselves rel-ative to the epoch’s major trends, gauge howthey impact our stratum’s life chances, andpresumably act collectively on the basis ofthe insight attained. In a later interview,however, Donoghue (2008) reasserted: ‘‘Thetenure-track professoriate will never berestored.’’ Possibly punctuating his point,a pop-up ad about for-pay, Argosy Univer-sity’s online degree programs appeareddirectly above the head ‘‘The Last Profes-sors’’ when I printed out his interview. Millsaside, Donoghue did not discuss the rela-tionship of higher education trends to theneoliberal regime of governance and accu-mulation, which has exerted substantial con-stitutive force on other institutional spheresand left its deep imprint on the historicalconjuncture (signified by pundits, theorists,and policymakers as the era of ‘‘globaliza-tion’’). Donoghue might have lost focushad he attempted to theorize this connection.Also, his Millsian imperative urges readersthemselves to inquire and reflect critically

Review Essays 5


about the big picture. However, Donoghuestill should have spoken with less certaintyabout the future and entertained contradic-tions, tensions, and conflicts that couldresult in divergent outcomes. The neoliberalregime, today, is in terminal crisis or, at least,in need of major reconstruction; the roughwaters and possible tsunami could hastenthe trends that Donoghue and others portrayor open the way for now hard-to-imaginealternatives.

Dwelling on the professoriate’s vanitiesand inequalities, Donoghue leaves aside thequestion of why prestigious institutionswould bother to preserve the humanities.He does state, in passing, that elites rely onhumanities scholars and writers for contex-tual knowledge in policy formation, implyingperhaps that instrumental affairs requirenormative direction and, therefore, effectivesocietal management depends on culturaleducation as well as technical education.Thus, the humanities are a cultural resourceas well as a prestige and class marker for lead-ership and professional strata. Donoghue’sadvice to heed Mill’s sociology lessonrequires an ability to make problematictaken-for-granted social arrangements, detectconnections between disparate events andconditions, and employ critical rationalityabout ends as well as means. Arguably,well-taught humanities and social sciencecourses nurture such skills. But Donoghuedoes not make a case to explain why suchcapacities ought to be cultivated in widercircles. He might have pondered the questionhad he engaged Dewey along with other earlycritics of corporatized education. Deweyargued that cultural education is necessarynot only for intelligent exercise of ‘‘popularsuffrage’’ and other political rights, but alsofor the wider social and cultural participationcharacteristic of robust democracy. He heldthat ‘‘culture is opposed to efficiency’’ whenthe latter is construed too narrowly and issevered from meaningful participation incooperative activity.5 A possibly telling facetof our current condition is that the Deweyanideal of achieving a just distribution of themeans of participation, or substantive equalopportunity, seems to be entirely contradic-tory to the higher education trajectory thatDonoghue plots and that many of us believemust be the case.

The Millsian inquiry suggested by Donog-hue should go beyond reflection about theprofessoriate’s location and fate. Doeshigher educational polarization mirror andfacilitate wider plutocratic trends? Are thereparallel trends in primary and secondaryeducation? Does today’s education manifest,legitimate, and reproduce a ‘‘winners takeall society?’’ In the 1920s and early 1930s,Dewey warned that if American schools,jobs, and entertainment culture continuedto produce ‘‘citizenship fodder’’ even theelitist, managerial regime that Walter Lipp-mann considered to be the only prudent, civ-ilized possibility for mass democracy, mightnot be sustainable. Dewey believed that ourdemocracy’s formalization imperils liberalinstitutions and opens the way for authori-tarian and totalitarian currents in times ofcrisis. In recent decades, many thinkers,across disciplines, have heralded vibrantcivil societies to be a sign of democratic vital-ity and progress. Neomodernization theo-rists and their critics from left and fromright debate this contention. However, cangenuinely democratic civil society be sus-tained in the type of world that Donoghuesays is upon us? If educational inequality isprofound, can democratic civil society beanything but a convenient illusion? Candemocracy survive if recession becomesdepression and, especially, if climate changeand other environmental/resource crisesrequire fundamental rethinking and reor-ganizing of growth, consumption, and builtenvironments? If a higher educational castesystem is hardening, it does not portendwell for the fate of civil society or democracy.

The Last Professors is provocative, worth-while read, and has relevance beyond thehumanities, even as broadly construed.Stimulating critical reflection about themeaning of the pursuance of scholarlycareers, Donoghue challenges readers toponder academe’s intense status competi-tion, the frenetic ‘‘productivity’’ that itrequires and justifies, its impacts and direc-tions, especially as they bear on our rolesas teachers, intellectuals, and citizens.Reflecting on these matters broadly and seri-ously is especially timely at a moment whenhigher education is at a possible historicalcrossroad and is widely and intenselydebated in the public square.

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Notes

1. Adjunct, contingent, or supplementary instruc-tors include part-time and full-time non-tenure-track faculty and graduate assistants.

2. Sociologists Wendy Espeland and MichaelSauder (2009:18) quote a law school dean:‘‘Almost everything we do now is prefacedby, ‘How will this affect our ranking?’’’ Theyreport that administrators say ranking is an‘‘omnipresent concern,’’ decisive in shapingadmissions, scholarship allocation, programfunding, and state and regent allocations.They say: ‘‘schools change their activities andpolicies to optimize their standings on the[rankers’] criteria . . . ’’ The Sociology Job MarketRumor Mill blog is a microcosm of the worldportrayed by Donoghue: comments about‘‘tier’’ and other expressions of status con-sciousness, successful and failed self-promo-tion, and frustration about the vicissitudes ofthe job market suffuse the site.

3. The Modern Language Association and Associ-ation of Departments of English report similartrends (MLA and ADE 2008). See Spalter-Rothand Scelza (2009) and ASA (2009) for discussionof these reports and of employment trends andprospects in sociology.

4. A 20-nation survey found that worldwidefaculty feel that their institutions operate ina top-down fashion and that pressure for pro-ductivity threatens research quality; Americanfaculty ‘‘feel exceptionally powerless’’ withregard to institutional policymaking and feelless administrative support for ‘‘academic free-dom’’ than reported in a 1992 survey (Schmidt2009).

5. See Dewey (1985 [1916]:92–94, 343). Deweyheld presciently that robust democracyrequires dismantling class, race, gender, andethnic barriers to equal educational opportun-ity and social participation. Also, he stressedthe aesthetic or ‘‘consummatory’’ worth aswell as the instrumental value of learningand knowing.

References

ASA. 2009. ‘‘News from ASA’s Reference Depart-ment.’’ Footnotes 37(4):3.

AFT. 2009. American Academic: The State ofthe Higher Education Workforce 1997–2007.Retrieved May 29, 2009 (http://www.aft.org/pubs-reports/higher_ed/AmerAcad_ report_97-07.pdf).

Baskin, Paul. 2009. ‘‘U.S. May Need to PruneNumber of Research Universities, LobbyGroup Says.’’ The Chronicle of Higher Education,June 26. Retrieved June 26, 2009 (http://chronicle.com/daily/2009/06/20810n.htm).

Blumenstyke, Goldie. 2009. ‘‘As Fiscal Year Ends,Big Questions Loom for Colleges’ FinancialFutures.’’ The Chronicle of Higher Education,June 29. Retrieved June 29, 2009 (http://chronicle.com/weekly/v55/i40/40june.htm).

Chronicle Research Services. 2009. The College of2020: Students (Executive Summary), June 5Retrieved June 23, 2009 (http://research.chronicle.com/asset/TheCollegeof2020ExecutiveSummary.pdf).

Dewey, John. 1985 [1916]. Democracy and Education.Vol. 9, John Dewey: The Middle Works 1899–1924,edited by Jo Ann Boydston. Carbondale andEdwardsville, IL: Southern Illinois UniversityPress.

Donoghue, Frank. 2008. ‘‘The Last Professors’’(interview by Scott Jaschik). Inside HigherEducation, June 11. Retrieved June 12, 2009(http://www.insidehighered.com/news/2008/06/11/lastprofs).

Espeland, Wendy and Michael Sauder. 2009.‘‘Rating the Rankings.’’ Contexts 8(2):16–21.

Fish, Stanley. 2009. ‘‘The Last Professor.’’ New YorkTimes, January 18. Retrieved May 26, 2009(http://fish.blogs.nytimes.com/2009/01/18/the-last-professor/).

Gouldner, Alvin W. 1979. The Future of Intellectualsand the Rise of the New Class. New York: OxfordUniversity Press.

MLA and ADE. 2008. Education in the Balance: AReport on the Academic Workforce in English,December. Retrieved May 22, 2009 (http://www.mla.org/pdf/workforce_rpt02.pdf).

Spalter-Roth, Roberta, and Janene, Scelza. 2009.‘‘What’s Happening in Your Department:Who’s Teaching and How Much?’’ March.Washington, DC: American Sociological Asso-ciation. Retrieved May 26 (http://www.asanet.org/galleries/default-file/ASAdptsvybrf2.pdf).

Schmidt, Peter. 2009. ‘‘U.S. Faculty Members FeelA Lack of Clout, International Study Finds.’’The Chronicle of Higher Education, June 12.Retrieved June 12, 2009 (http://chronicle.com/daily/2009/06/19931n.htm).

Review Essays 7


The Curious Case of Academic Reviewing

THEODORE M. PORTER

University of California, Los [email protected]

The title of this book, with its ‘‘curiousworld,’’ evokes Alice in Fellowshipland,and the ironies that ethnography might bringforth when brought to bear on our own cul-ture of self-conscious reason. Even those ofus who inhabit and are devoted to this worldof academic research may yet marvel that itsrewards, the patronage bestowed on scholarsand scientists, could have become so fullyinstitutionalized, so normal. A research repu-tation has become the key qualification forarbitrators of excellence, who push whatimpresses them to the top and pronounce itcream. Michele Lamont does not followthrough on her book’s suggestion of ironicaldistancing, but examines in earnest a systemshe knows well. Literary evocation here issubordinated to formal analysis of interviewtranscripts, including qualitative analysisthrough ‘‘analytic matrices’’ and contentanalysis using software that standardizescodes and checks inter coder reliability.

The quantification yields tables compar-ing how three disciplinary clusters, namelythe humanities, history, and social sciences,invoke various standards of excellence,including clarity, originality, and signifi-cance, as well as in how they construe theideal of ‘‘diversity.’’ The tables show sur-prising similarity among fields, such asEnglish literature and economics, whoseforms of writing and analysis are sharplydiscrepant. Had her topic extended beyondthe humanities and social sciences to chem-istry, geophysics, engineering, medicine,and management, differences in researchpractice would become still more extreme.Lamont’s point, however, is that the stand-ards being evaluated, at least in the fieldsshe has studied, overlap considerably. Herethnographic analysis, informed by 81 inter-views and observation of meetings of a doz-en fellowship committees, identifies somedifferences between social science positiv-ism and the typical reflexivity of human-ists. Yet a considerable domain of sharedvalues, as well as a spirit of compromise

and negotiation that the more effectivepanelists bring to their work, allows aca-demics from different fields to understandone another and to make decisions thatare acceptable to all.

Not every professor will reach the point ofsitting on fellowship panels for agencies likethe American Council of Learned Societiesor the Social Science Research Council, butit is scarcely possible to serve conscien-tiously over a career on a university facultywithout devoting much of one’s time to per-sonnel processes, including promotions andgrants. I do not believe that anyone withexperience of this world, at least in the Unit-ed States, would be very surprised by themain conclusions of this book. WhileLamont properly dismisses any notion that‘‘the cream always rises to the top’’(unaided) or that excellence is spontaneouslyrecognized, she rejects also the cynicism thatwe find for example in the work of Bourdieu,whose characters struggle only for their owninterest, in a battle for prestige and position.She is no Pollyanna, and she certainly recog-nizes self-regarding motives in the panelistsshe studies, yet she depicts these men andwomen working together, according respectto one another, making compromises, andtrying to exploit the full range of expertiseon the panels to reach good enough, ifnot perfect, decisions. These decisions, sheshows, reflect a group dynamic, and ifindeed there are social scientists who thinkthat a social process like this can only com-promise individual rationality, her depictionshould bring them around.

In the guise of an academic book, Lamontsupplies also an elementary ‘‘how-to’’

How Professors Think: Inside the CuriousWorld of Academic Judgment, by MicheleLamont. Cambridge, MA: HarvardUniversity Press, 2009. 330pp. $27.95cloth. ISBN: 9780674032668.

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manual for prospective panelists on fellow-ship agencies. ‘‘Panelists are expected toadopt a consistently respectful tone towardone another. . . . Collegiality has a concreteeffect on panel discussions and their out-comes; it is the oil that keeps the wheels ofdeliberation turning . . . ’’ (pp. 119–120). Pan-elists should, and do, defer to the expertiseof their colleagues from other fields, evenwhile remaining vigilant. They shouldguard themselves against ‘‘homophily,’’ aninordinate sympathy for work that is likeone’s own. Should they be wary also, sheasks, of standards that favor the most eliteuniversities? Such institutions, she informsus, give an advantage to their faculties andstudents by immersing them in what is new-est and most exciting. So it may be legitimateto lower standards slightly for the sake ofdisadvantaged outsiders. It would certainlybe unfair, however, for panels to consider‘‘evanescent’’ qualities, in particular ‘‘cul-tural capital,’’ which give an advantage tothose from privileged backgrounds, andespecially to the professors’ own offspring.

That word, evanescent, struck me as pre-cisely wrong. If a recognition of cultural cap-ital implies a disadvantage for rural andworking-class children or for certain ethnicminorities, that is precisely because it canbe so stubbornly persistent. And yet it issurely misguided to presume that culturalcapital is mere decoration, readily separableby the researcher from real merit. Suchsophistication can be the difference betweenjumping on an academic bandwagon,deploying the latest methods or theory as ifthey provide a sufficient account of every-thing, and exploiting a range of resourceswith skill and subtlety. At the same time,insiderdom can occlude as much as it illumi-nates. The discomfort of not quite belonging,or a degree of insulation from Eminent

Professors at their Elite Institutions, can sus-tain a critical perspective on the prevailingcommonplaces, and even nurture uncom-mon originality.

Expert panelists judging fellowship appli-cations would do well to give a secondthought now and again to what does notappear to be on the cutting edge. Facedwith many proposals and little time, thedanger that always looms is to be captivatedby surfaces. Even scholars in fields thatvalue thick description will often usea more superficial indicator to identify it.Lamont’s study, which relies heavily on thewords of her panelists themselves, does notgive ready access to this other form of assess-ment, thin description. We experience it morereadily in evaluations without panels, orthose in which numerical scoring sums upthe descriptive assessments. At the NationalScience Foundation, an average of scoresdefines a strong expectation of success orfailure, from which there usually will notbe many departures.

On panels like the ones Lamont ana-lyzes, members from outside the disciplineof the applicant will often feel squeezedbetween a lack of confidence in theirown assessment and a reluctance simplyto capitulate to what the disciplinary spe-cialist tells them. The best panelists seekgrounds for an informed judgment thatachieves some degree of independence,not by ignoring the opinion of the ostensi-ble expert, but by respectfully questioningit and comparing with their own reactions.The possibility of proceeding this way is(potentially) the advantage of decision bypanel discussion over an average of inde-pendent expert reviews, and it confirmsLamont’s insight that collective delibera-tion and agreement can heighten ratio-nality rather than compromise it.

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The Passion, and Passions, of Max Weber

HARVEY GOLDMAN

University of California, San [email protected]

When Marianne Weber, the widow of MaxWeber, published her biography of her hus-band in 1926, six years after his death, itwas considered to be so unusually frankabout Weber’s life and his enormous person-al sufferings, that one of Weber’s former col-leagues sarcastically remarked that thebiography gave one insight into the valueof the institution of widow-burning. Yet,starting after her death almost 30 years later,more and more information, and then docu-mentation, began to become available toscholars that painted an even more intimatepicture of Weber’s psychological sufferingsand personal experiences, and in particularhis apparently ‘‘redemptive’’ extramaritallove life, details of which, understandably,Marianne chose not to reveal in her book,assuming she herself even knew the details.Although some works began to appear thatchallenged aspects of the idealized pictureof Weber— notably Wolfgang J. Mommsen’sMax Weber and German Politics (1959) onWeber’s nationalist politics—the works thatthen began to reveal, or to speculate, abouthis intimate life in more detail were not writ-ten with any goal of discrediting Weber’swork or of unmasking some damning per-sonal qualities or actions. This did not pre-vent such works, which are still very muchworth reading—notably, Arthur Mitzman’sThe Iron Cage (1969) and Martin Green’s Thevon Richthofen Sisters (1974)—from beingroundly attacked as gossipy, reductive, andeven vaguely scurrilous.

The great love of Weber’s life, Else Jaffe,nee von Richthofen, lived until 1973—shewas also, by the way, the great love andalso the companion of Alfred Weber, Max’sbrother. Yet, despite her continued presence,and despite the explosion in research onWeber since the early 1960s, no one was reallyin a good position to take a stab at anotherbiography to replace Marianne’s, and thisfor a number of reasons. First, Weber wasso involved with the many academics andintellectuals of his time that it was extremely

difficult to situate him historically withoutundertaking a virtual intellectual history ofhis time, or else relying on others’ scholarlywork on this period, which was underway,but far from complete. Second, due to con-cerns about Nazi rule or due to the destruc-tion of World War II, many valuabledocuments from the time, including muchcorrespondence, did not survive. Third,though much new material had been madeavailable in a 1964 collection by EduardBaumgarten, a Weber relative, it was still dif-ficult to get hold of and get permission to usemost of Weber’s enormous correspondence,which was dispersed in various archives orin personal collections. When the work ona historical-critical edition of Weber’s workswas begun 30 years ago, the general editorsproceeded also to collect that correspon-dence, but they have held it close for avariety of reasons, making it extremely dif-ficult for scholars to obtain the access theywould need to write a biography. Indeed,the edition of the works is still far from com-plete, although the first volumes toappear—edited by Martin Riesebrodt of theUniversity of Chicago—came out in 1984.The first volume of letters to appear cameout in 1990, the most recent in 2008, andthey cover only the period 1906, with at leastfive volumes still to appear.

Thus, although Guenther Roth publisheda remarkable and well-documented historyof Weber’s family in German in 2001, theappearance of Joachim Radkau’s 1000-pagebook, Max Weber: Die Leidenschaft des Denk-ens, in Germany in 2005 caused quite a stir,since it drew on so many of the mostintimate of Weber’s and others’ letters that

Max Weber: A Biography, by JoachimRadkau. Translated by PatrickCamiller. Cambridge, UK: Polity Press,2009. 683pp. $35.00 cloth. ISBN:9780745641478.

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Radkau had been able to consult in archives.Radkau’s book shows that Weber’s sufferingwas even greater than has usually beenthought, and we learn about it here at a levelof detail that is somewhat of a shock, since somany of Weber’s problems came out insymptoms that disrupted his sexual functionand were the object, not only of various‘‘treatments’’ but also of an explosion of‘‘discourse’’ in letters and other sources,including, amazingly, many directed by hiswife to Weber’s mother. This is only one ofthe things that makes Radkau’s book, nowin English and reduced by 300 pages,a unique resource for a variety of potentialaudiences.

Yet, in spite of the subtitle of this transla-tion, ‘‘A Biography,’’ Radkau’s book is notreally a stand-alone biography in the tradi-tional sense in which we would normallyuse the term. Nor is it a book for beginners,that is, an introductory work for newcomersto Weber’s life and work, for it is in continualdialogue with and critical relation to bothMarianne’s biography and other scholarlyliterature about Weber’s work, and thusreally relies on one knowing much of thelife, the work, and some of the disputesabout both. It would be extremely difficultto follow the various discussions withoutother knowledge than this book itselfprovides. Indeed, Radkau refers everyfew pages to what, in his view, others haveoverlooked or not understood. Thus,Marianne’s biography, as well as works byMommsen, Roth, and others, still remainsindispensable.

The key theoretical element in Radkau’sargument is that Weber needs to be under-stood in terms of his relation to a very com-plex and multisided ‘‘nature,’’ both Weber’sown nature and his understanding of nature,which Radkau considers a ‘‘missing link’’between Weber’s life and work. This mightbe called an ‘‘embodied’’ approach to theunderstanding of knowledge production,something explicitly taken up these days inanthropology and in certain branches of cog-nitive science. Radkau himself invokes the‘‘ecology of mind,’’ from Gregory Bateson,which may not be surprising, given that heis also a historian of the environment.Unfortunately, despite the many uses of theconcept of nature, Radkau does not present

us with a comprehensive understandingbased on a more systematic study of Weber’suse of the concept, nor does he examine itsuses in historical context, whether in popu-lar works or more scholarly and scientificstudies, so that we can see what might bedistinctive about Weber in this respect.

Still, though it may not be a traditionalbiography, Radkau’s book is a contributionon many levels. First, he does provide aninterpretation of Weber’s life, correctingMarianne’s account and providing manydetails that Marianne did not include, espe-cially about Weber’s psychological and sex-ual issues—he himself calls it a ‘‘myth’’that he relies on to structure the shape anddevelopment of the life. Indeed, Radkauseems particularly suited for this aspect ofhis task, given that he is also the author ofan important earlier study of precisely thepreoccupation with ‘‘nerves’’ in Germansociety of the Wilhelmine period and after.Second, Radkau situates Weber in terms ofimportant parts of the intellectual and sociallife of the epoch, particularly Weber’s manyfriends and associates, and to do this hedraws on the most recent scholarship inmany fields, as well as personal communica-tions from numerous leading scholars. All ofthis makes the book an extremely importantcontribution to German intellectual, and per-haps ‘‘psychological,’’ history.

Yet, third, it is as an interpretation ofWeber’s work in terms of detailed evidenceabout his psychological and sexual strugglesthat Radkau, I think, would claim to be mak-ing his most important contribution. This,too, is the aspect of the book most likely tointerest sociologists and other social scien-tists. In this respect, the closest analogue tohis book is Mitzman’s, from many decadesearlier, though the level of documentationis of an altogether different order. Thisbook is certainly a major contribution toa sociology of the emotions, and yet thebook marshals evidence from and argueson many levels, not only the intimatelysexual. Still, for those to whom the manydetails about Weber’s (and others’!) partic-ular sexual torments seem merely salaciousor irrelevant, Radkau has very specificresponses throughout the book in the formof inferences, speculations, possible links,not only with the ‘‘myth’’ of the life, but

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also with specific claims or findings inWeber’s works.

Unfortunately, this is not only the strengthof the work but also its weakness, for thebook is also filled with what have to be calledwild and amateurish speculations about linksbetween Weber’s illnesses and his specificinsights into society or religion. One cannoteven begin to list the unfounded and unsup-ported assertions, so numerous are they.There is here no clear method or theoryabout the relations between psychology and

intellectual production to guide the analysis,except the method of analogy. As a conse-quence, many of Radkau’s claims will notonly be disputed, but also may run the riskof being dismissed out of hand. However,despite the many reservations and disagree-ments I have with the book, I think Radkau’sspeculations are of secondary importance,compared with the larger contribution of hiswork. There is nothing like it, and it shouldopen up many new vistas for thought aboutand analysis of Weber.

Future-making as a Vocation

PETER WEINGART

Bielefeld [email protected]

Steven Shapin has written a fascinating newbook dealing with the world of entrepre-neurial ‘‘technoscientists’’ and their net-worked corporate environments. The book,in a sense, follows the path taken in a previ-ous one: A Social History of Truth (Shapin1994), where he developed the thesis thata particular social status (gentleman) andthe unique trust accorded to it rather thanevidentiary proof explains the growth of sci-entific knowledge. Trust is obviously thecentral category in this claim, and it is linkedto familiarity among individuals.

This thesis which challenges commonopinion in the philosophy of science and in(institutional) sociology may be irritated byone prominent development: the emergenceof organized and planned science, first in theindustrial laboratories of the German chem-ical and electrical industry of the late nine-teenth century, then by the industriallaboratories in the United States up to WorldWar II, and finally by the U.S. government’sorganization of research during and after thewar. Thus, Shapin is out to show that thereare still ‘‘some centrally important socialand intellectual configurations’’ (p. xvii)—(i.e.,‘‘the personal dimension,’’ p. 3)—from the‘‘world-we-have-lost’’ but which have beenobscured by academic accounts. He sets twotasks for his book at the very beginning: to‘‘establish the claim about personal virtues

and to account for its apparent oddness’’(p. 1), that is, with some simplification: histori-an (of science) against sociologists (of science),a challenging project. Since he intends to takesociology to test, I allow myself to respondalong that line primarily.

Early on Shapin reminds his readers of theorigins of the scientists’ identities in theeighteenth and nineteenth centuries andthe gradual transition from science as a voca-tion to job, associated with the weakening ofthe scientists’ social disengagement andtheir increasing importance as producers ofeconomically and politically relevant knowl-edge. The ‘‘moral equivalence’’ of the scien-tist becomes a discursive motif whosegenealogy reaches back into the nineteenthcentury and persists well until after WorldWar II. (Strangely, Shapin mentions Alexan-der von Humboldt only once and Wilhelmvon Humboldt, the theorist of the ‘‘humanisteducation ideal’’ in opposition to the‘‘Brotstudium,’’ (education for a job), not atall.) But it competes throughout this time

The Scientific Life: A Moral History of a LateModern Vocation, by Steven Shapin.Chicago, IL: University of ChicagoPress, 2008. 468pp. $29.00 cloth. ISBN:9780226750248.

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with the notion of ‘‘moral superiority’’ of thescientists. It can be found at least until Mer-ton put forth his claim that it was the institu-tional setting of academic science rather thanthe quality of individuals that had to be con-sidered if not morally superior at least insti-tutionally specific. Normalization of thescientist was one aspect of the complexways in which the two discourses overlap-ped and fed on each other. It is importantto note that the analytical concept underly-ing this account (and most of what follows)is that of ‘‘moral economies,’’ although it isnever explicitly defined or developed.

The normalization of scientists, thedecline of virtuous science from vocation tojob, in Shapin’s account, is a misplaced nos-talgic view that sociologists and academichumanists held because they were marginal-ized in the 1960’s, losing influence to thephysicists and engineers in the context ofthe ‘‘military-industrial-academic complex’’nurtured by the Cold War. Thus, the socialscience and humanist observers mysteri-ously ignored and even viciously dismissedthe ‘‘industrial scientist.’’ Before the back-drop of a largely ignored reality of industrialand state research these academic observers,mostly sociologists, entertained a discussionabout whether science could be plannedor not. Shapin claims that already by mid-century the industrial rather than theacademic scientist was the institutionalnorm—at least in terms of number ofscientists employed—while sociologistsstill drew a picture of the academic scientif-ic community being the ‘‘Good Society’’(p. 110–11). At the same time, he doesacknowledge that, in a sense, the universitywas the scientists’ natural home, that scien-tists were socialized into the academicvalues system and that employment inindustry, thus the sociologists’ prediction,implied a transition ‘‘from high to low’’(p. 113) and consequently would lead toconflicts.

From here on, it is an empirical question ifMerton’s thesis of the socialization of partic-ular values and behavioral patterns not asfunctional prerequisite but as institutionalreality holds water. Sociologists like Marc-son, Kornhauser, and Hagstrom followingthe Mertonian program identified the antici-pated conflicts and theirs became the dominant

view while more differentiated studies byPelz/Andrews or Strauss/Rainwater weremarginalized. Business school writers likeF. W. Taylor, Mayo, and Roethlisberger, too,thought that scientists were a ‘‘breed apart,’’and to organize and manage them wouldrequire a deeper understanding of theirmotives and needs (p. 123).

How to come closer to the reality of theindustrial scientist? Look at the discourseamong the managers of (industrial) science!Although I do not quite follow Shapin’sinterpretation of the material he has col-lected, Chapter 5 is a core part of the bookand in my view the most interesting becauseit provides a new kind of evidence central tothe argument. Somewhat surprisingly, Sha-pin claims that the presumption of role con-flict held by sociologists ‘‘appears to lackevidential support’’ (p. 156), but at thesame time the discourse of the managersreflects the very divide between ‘‘pure’’and ‘‘applied’’ research as well as the (per-ceived) specificity of the researchers’ moti-vations. The ambivalence of allowing forfreedom and autonomy of the researcherson one hand and the need for control andaccountability on the other, expressed inmany of the managers’ statements, seemsto reflect the nature of the inescapableproblem facing them: the management ofknowledge production under conditions ofuncertainty.

‘‘Moral economy’’ as an analytical cate-gory is put to work here and convincinglyreveals the broad diversity of experiencesof managers and scientists in different labo-ratories—they vary in correlation with thedegree of uncertainty (p. 162)—which mayspeak against a generalized ‘‘value socializa-tion.’’ But the evidence remains inconclu-sive. I would suggest that differentiationtheory is the superior explanatory strategy:the discourse of research managers mirrorsa reality on the level of (industrial research)organization that is torn between the mana-gerial needs of industry and the scientists’interests in self-determination. These twosystemic codes have been colliding onthe level of the industrial laboratory, notonly during the Cold War and under theobservation of functionalist sociologists buteven today in the age of entrepreneurialscience.

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The very existence of the entrepreneurialscientist, the Craig Venters and Kary Mul-lises, and the widespread entrepreneurialactivity on the part of universities whichthey are enticed to entertain by Bayh-Dole-type legislation, and abundant political pro-paganda, would appear to have shifted theweights of vice and virtue away from thesociologists’ view of the good society, prov-ing them awkwardly out of touch. Shapinsuggests institutional convergence betweenscience and industry instead, science (espe-cially universities) becoming more like cor-porations and corporations more likeknowledge-producing organizations. Butthe picture emerging from interviews andconversations, interesting as an impression-istic description, is inconclusive. It may beinterpreted either way, and that is, in fact,the same result coming out of more system-atic analyses of the impact of Bayh-Dole onU.S. universities and similar arrangementson European ones. Likewise, a recent disser-tation on the scientific community’s percep-tion of media star scientists reveals CraigVenter as a unique figure as well as a grada-tion of sentiments among the rest of the com-munity of geneticists. Evidently, the entirespectrum from virtuous academic to entre-preneurial researcher is very much intact(Rodder 2009).

That is not to say that Shapin’s account iswrong. Merton and his followers have beenone-sided in their description of the ‘‘GoodSociety’’ of ‘‘pure’’ university science. Despiteevidence to the contrary the ‘‘other’’ side, thatis, industrial and military research, remained

(with some notable exceptions!) largely out ofview—not just of the sociologists’ but of thehistorians’ of science as well, partly becausethe Cold War provided the supportive ideo-logical context, partly because sociologistswere elaborating research on an ideal type.This has changed for some time, and notonly sociologists but also historians andeven philosophers of science have discoveredthe world of research outside academia. Sha-pin’s book follows this general movement. Byapproaching the issue from the analyticalperspective of ‘‘moral economies,’’ he takesan innovative cut. The outcome is a veryreadable book packed with interesting detailsof the intertwined discourses on the manage-ment of science from the academic observers’and the practitioners’ perspectives. Anyoneinterested in studying the inside of industrialscience will find a host of useful material.And yes, science in the new world of NPMand entrepreneurial universities has evolvedfrom vocation to job, but it still is a uniquekind of job the adequacy of whose manage-ment remains hidden behind a curtain ofideology, unfounded beliefs and stereotypicalperceptions.

Reference

Rodder, Simone. 2009. ‘‘Wahrhaft sichtbar.Humangenomforscher in der Offentlichkeit.’’(‘‘Truly visible! Human genome researchersin the public’’) In Wissenschaft-und Technikfor-schung, Vol. 3, edited by A. Bora, S. Maasen,C. Reinhardt, and P. Weling, Baden-Baden:Nomos.

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